OWU Graduate Elected to National Academy of Inventors
Paul Schimmel ’62 Recognized for Work to Interpret Genetic Information, Advance Medicine
Ohio Wesleyan University alumnus Paul Schimmel, Ph.D., Class of 1962, has been elected as a fellow by the National Academy of Inventors.
The honor recognizes academics who have helped to create or facilitate “outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and welfare of society.”
Schimmel is a principal investigator for The Scripps Research Institute as a professor in the institute’s Department of Cell and Molecular Biology.
According to Scripps, Schimmel’s work “combines biochemistry, molecular and cell biology with genetics, X-ray crystallography, and evolutionary analysis to explore the nature, function, and therapeutic uses of aminoacyl tRNA synthetases, enzymes that interpret genetic information in all living organisms.” The goal of the research is to develop a new class of therapeutics to treat and cure human diseases.
At Ohio Wesleyan, Schimmel majored in pre-medicine. He earned his doctorate in biophysical chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. OWU’s Schimmel/Conrades Science Center is named, in part, in his honor.
Schimmel and the other new fellows of the National Academy of Inventors will be honored at the academy’s annual conference in April in Washington, D.C.
Read more about Schimmel and his work at www.scripps.edu/research/faculty/Schimmel. Read more about Ohio Wesleyan’s pre-medicine major at www.owu.edu/pre-medicine.